Girl Peace Scouts in Oropi

Girl Peace Scouts, Oropi 1923
Image courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection

While cataloguing photographs recently at the Tauranga Heritage Collection as part of my volunteer duties, I came across this intriguing snapshot of a group of Girl Peace Scouts in Oropi, dated 1923.

Reverse of vernacular photograph, 80 x 55mm
Image courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection

The reverse of the photograph has all of the individuals identified:

Back row: Daisy Dunn, Mrs Rogers, Eileen Wilson, Esther Parkinson, Mrs MacPhail, Liny Fugill, Mrs Hodges, Miss Woods
Front: Gwyn Aldiss, Gwen Heap, Doreen MacPhail, Clarice Hodges, Lorna Heap ... Dick Aldiss

As a local resident, several of these names are still familiar to me.

The Girl Peace Scouts were formed in New Zealand as a separate organisation to the Boy Scouts.  The Tauranga company's first camp in a paddock in 1925 is recorded as proceeding well, although the latrine pit was dug 2 feet deep and 4 feet wide instead of vice versa.  They traded in their khaki uniforms for Girl Guides Association blues in the mid- to late 1920s.
- extracted from ‘Making happy, healthy, helpful citizens’: The New Zealand Scouting and Guiding Movements as Promulgators of Active Citizenship, c.1908-1980, a 2012 Ph.D. thesis by Helen Alison Dollery